Is no one going to say it?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Brown University
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<p>I’ve been stuck in my house with a thyroid condition for a few days and I’ve run out of things to do, so I’m just going to share my experiences with all of you because I’m curious what you have to say. This “you” is not a collective aggressive you. It’s a “you” directed to the people I am about to describe.</p>

<p>Let me first say that the concept of college confidential is pretty nice. I joined here to get more information on transferring to Brown. It’s a good place to find out information about colleges and share experiences and get as educated as possible by people that are able to be completely honest with you regarding the nature of schools.</p>

<p>That being said, this is a terrible, terrible place. Consider this constructive criticism. The following are some of the horrors I have witnessed while on these boards.</p>

<ol>
<li>PEOPLE THAT FLAUNT THEIR “CREDENTIALS”
I’ve seen these people on these boards and I’ve seen these people in real life. They do all their work because they are (italics here) good students. They get high SAT scores because they took a lot of prep. They seem quite impressed that they were vice president of this and co-founder of that extra-curricular organization, but they and everyone else know that this involved filling out a survey Freshman year and dutifully completing minor tasks until they were inevitably promoted because we all know that is how it works. People mistake “organizational abilities” with “the ability to pick up a phone and call the red cross and have them hold a blood drive at your school.” This is not a novel idea.</li>
</ol>

<p>People needlessly post their high school resumes in chance topics as a defense mechanism for how worried they are about whether or not they will get into their top college, and for most people here their top college is an ivy league, or some other big name college that, through the nature of their questions, it becomes quite obvious they know absolutely nothing about it. This can be hurtful to other people that are applying. These are often joined a few months later by posts by people that say things like “I had a 3.9 and was President of the Sheet-Signing club, how did people with (insert lower GPA here) get in?!” Please revisit this question and realize that if you are the kind of person that would actually say something like this, you may also be the kind of person that unknowingly writes in her essay that the dean’s daughter is a prostitute. Or perhaps they’re ivy league schools and they are crapshoots and you’ll live if you go to Tufts instead. Maybe you need to stop chipping away at the latter years of your life by generally being such a miserable person.</p>

<ol>
<li>DO NOT POST IN TOPICS THAT YOU DO NOT THINK YOU WILL GET IN, AND THEN PROVIDE REASONING THAT WOULD UNDOUBTEDLY BE REASONING THAT WOULD SUPPORT YOUR GETTING IN</li>
</ol>

<p>This actually happens. You’ve all seen it. The people that do it know who they are. You know who you are. Let me demonstrate:</p>

<p>“I’ll never get in! Who would want a quirky Native Alaskan?”</p>

<p>Problems with this: if you said this, I will bet my dogs hind legs that it is only half-true.
-Also, you are ridiculous. I really can’t take it any further than that. The fact that people actually do this is absurd. If you want to know what kind of person thinks this is a good idea, yet seems to have great credentials, see problem 1 above.</p>

<ol>
<li>STOP HOARDING COLLEGE KARMA</li>
</ol>

<p>The response to a statement such as the one above is always something like, “What are you talking about? They love quirky Native Alaskans!” But the thing is (to the people who say that) you know they know that. 100% of the people that respond with a ridiculous reassurance to an absolutely outrageous statement cannot actually believe that the person in question thinks being a Native Alaskan is going to hurt his chances. What you really wanted to do is tell the person to stuff it and stop being so absurd. But apparently people think the dead alumni of the Ivies is haunting all the applicants with chance-shotguns ready to be fired at anyone who coughs and accidentally knocks a gnat out of its flight path. It’s almost as lame as number 2. Almost. Nothing is as lame as number 2.</p>

<ol>
<li>CHANCE TOPICS ARE DUMB</li>
</ol>

<p>There are a million reasons why chance topics are dumb, but I will go over the most obvious ones:</p>

<p>a. See number 3.
b. People don’t know. They are not admissions committees. Weird stuff happens in the admissions process. People get unfairly denied. People get unfairly accepted. Whether or not someone on the Internet thinks you might probably maybe kinda get in isn’t going to change whether or not you are actually going to get in.
c. Everyone, apparently, writes exceptional essays and has exceptional recommendations. Look up the definition of exceptional and realize what is wrong with this. Also, people often say they wrote stellar essays and then do something almost as/equally/exactly what I’m talking about in number 2. If you have nothing good to say, it is quite possible your essay is not exceptional. It is quite possible you wrote it about being half something and half American and how you had a hard time securing an identity growing up. Which is rarely true.</p>

<ol>
<li>YOU DON’T KNOW</li>
</ol>

<p>You don’t know. You don’t know whether or not someone will get in, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know much useful information about the selection process for a school, and you probably don’t know very much about the school itself.</p>

<p>Guys, I know the school application process is very stressful, and you are willing to do anything to have something to grasp onto. You feel really helpless and everything is out of your hands. But don’t be bad people.</p>

<p>And I will say this, the best part about this message being delivered in the Brown forum is that, if you’re one of the people described above, there is a very small group of people at Brown with which you will actually fit in. Just a warning.</p>

<p>I’m trying to help guys.</p>

<p>Also I am extremely bored and upset with this place.</p>

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<p>very valid points. i have always thought that the chance threads were pretty pointless.</p>

<p>but you should know that the people who frequent CC are going to make you burn for this…</p>

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<p>this post is full of VERY valid points that probably 90% of CC are aware of but don’t really feel the need to address</p>

<p>you will get burned with responses like “if you hate this site so much, why are you posting here?” and stuff like that although i’m not going to be the one to do it</p>

<p>i agree all of the points you made ARE very annoying but if you’re willing to go on CC you’ll just have to ignore it</p>

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<p>I regret making my chances thread a while back and wish I could delete it…ugh.</p>

<p>(EDIT: Well, it wasn’t exactly a chances thread but it was equally lame. In my own defense, I was young and naive)</p>

<p>I respect you for making this, by the way.</p>

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<p>Haha, very good. I bet you’d enjoy [Urban</a> Dictionary: College Confidential](<a href=“http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=College%20Confidential]Urban”>Urban Dictionary: College Confidential)
I’m quite glad you posted this. I would have thought you’d be attacked by now, but if we all agree with you, it’ll be a bigger, more sane group.</p>

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<p>I would reply to the people asking me why I’m here if I hate it by saying it’s a useful resource when you’re able to sort through the crap.</p>

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<p>1 - I’m a newer CC member and have been baffled by the chance threads. Glad you called it out.</p>

<p>2 - Did you get accepted as a transfer?!?</p>

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<p>If this were Facebook, I’d like this post. Alas, it’s not, so I’ll have to settle for subscribing to it.</p>

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<p>Echoing Uroogla. This is one of the better posts I’ve seen on CC. Well done, michaelblake.</p>

<p>We all know why chances threads exist. But remember that lots of people, prospective students and others alike, come to CC for advice. Your chances threads can be extremely discouraging to like-minded high school juniors who are trying to learn more about College X. I’m not saying that you should stop chancing each other, but please bear in mind the effect these posts may have.</p>

<p>I’d also like to underscore michaelblake’s fifth contention (“YOU DON’T KNOW”). Nope, you really don’t. You may be a legacy, a minority, and a child of a major donor, and sport stellar grades to boot… and still get rejected from your top five schools. There are hundreds of books and articles (try Daniel Golden’s “The Price of Admission” for a nice introduction) proving this point, supplemented by thousands of anecdotes on CC. About 1/3 of my high school class went to Ivies, and about 75% of them had some sort of connection. And some of the best students were rejected everywhere, unhooked OR hooked. I firmly believe it’s a crapshoot––people can make reasonable predictions, but no one will ever know.</p>

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<p>haha well I’m glad people agree.</p>

<p>(to daughtershelper)
I got accepted for Spring.</p>

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<p>michaelblake, love your post. The things that you pointed out are truly irritating. Still, its understandable in a way…these kids have been working their rear ends off/have been brownnosing for a while–they wanna see results NOW and that guilty pleasure of bragging is very enticing. It’s still annoying though…</p>

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<p>Congrats on acceptance! You’ll be a great addition to Brown.</p>

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<p>^Uroogla hit the nail on the head. I’m one who never did do a chances thread. I understand, though, especially as a junior or senior in high school, people go through a lot of panic attacks, are unsure of their future, want some sort of guidance and hope, and so post chances threads to get that. I’ve pretty much from the start encouraged people to apply where they saw fit, and to be confident enough in themselves not to need others’ reassurance. Especially as they’ve done more research and gained more understanding (hopefully) about their own situation than anyone else.</p>

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<p>What does “hooked” or “unhooked” mean? TIA.</p>

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<p>I agree with everything michael said and now that I’ve been accepted, I look back and wonder what I was thinking… I was willing to hear anything from anybody. it was kinda pathetic…</p>

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<p>I would build on the weirdness of “Chances” threads by adding the even more ridiculous “Chance me and I will chance you” threads"</p>

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<p>@eyeblink:</p>

<p>“hooked” and “unhooked” are jargon for applicants with or without an unusual or compelling feature. For instance, a hooked applicant might be connected (legacy, celebrity child, child of a major donor, parents are friends with influential members of the school administration, etc.), a minority, a recruited athlete, an award-winning artist (athlete, scientist) at a national or international level, etc. Sometimes a hook can be something that is arguably far more mundane, such as an interest in an obscure field (history of math!), an unusual background (brilliant kid from the inner city), or an atypical gender statistic (a female CS major). While the first types of hooks (esp. connected applicants) are not necessarily grounds for admission, these applicants are often successful. The second type are less successful on a case-by-case basis, but they may still stand out in the pool.</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I spend way too much time on this site and it is quite discouraging. The first day I was on this site i had gotten my first round of SATs back. I thought my scores were very respectable before, but after coming here I realized that I actually am incredibly dumb (sarcasm). Anyway, everyone is going to get into college with the types of credentials that we all have, so I think everyone should stop being pretentious (myself included) and chill out, as the OP said.</p>

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<p>In defense of Chances threads, posting them on College Confidential is less expensive than paying 50 cents to the fortune telling machine outside the Grand Union in Teaneck, NJ. Then again, you get what you pay for and give up a little bit of the accuracy by opting to save a little…</p>

<p>Also, I appreciate it when posters disclose in the heading that they want their chances assessed as it saves me at least two clicks.</p>

<p>So, in the end, they’re not quite as malignant as the OP suggests…though it would be nice to have a subforum for each college where the Chances threads could be stashed, instead of having them commingle with other discussions…sort of like how newspapers don’t put the horoscopes and Ziggy in with the news and editorials.</p>

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<p>As for 2: I agree. Some girl did this in the Brown transfer thread. It was like “I’m doubting they’d accept a quirky black girl from the south!” or something like that. And it’s like, “if you can’t realize that that is an ASSET and not your downfall, you probably don’t deserve to go to that school”.</p>